Devils Among Us (Devin Dushane Series Book 1) (16 page)

May 16, 1964

Henry walked over to the soda counter with Beth pressed
against his side. He tucked her head under his chin while he took a long pull
off his beer. What was this his third or fourth of the night? He frowned as she
took a delicate sip of her soda.
That’s not going to help.
“Hey kid,
I’ve got something in the car that will improve that soda and take the edge
off. C’mon.” He took her by the hand and they headed into the dark lot.

They reached Henry’s car at the far side of the lot where he
pulled out a flask, and splashed a few tablespoons of what smelled like
kerosene, into her soda.

“Go ahead. You’ll enjoy the warmth.”

Beth tried a sip, and flinched.  She took a deeper gulp the
second time, and he laughed at the horrible face she made.

“You should spend more time away from Laney. Let people
really see you as your own person and not an extension of her.” He stepped in
very close to her. She had to lift her face just inches from his to look him in
the eye. “You know, you really are very beautiful.”

Maybe it was their need to be wanted or maybe just the need
for human contact, but once their lips touched the kiss became desperate, more
important than air to breathe. They stayed there, wrapped in each other’s
embrace for quite some time, until headlights swept into the parking lot.
Fearing her reputation could be ruined just by being seen out here with him,
Henry opened the car door and slid into the back seat with her. It was
something he would regret all the days of his life.

Afterwards Henry whispered into her ear, “You can’t be seen
coming out of the parking lot with me like this. It could ruin you.” He paused
for only a second, and as if reading her mind continued, “Laney can get away
with a lot of things that other decent girls can’t.”

Beth looked up at him with longing in her huge puppy dog
hazel eyes and started to ask him something, but he cut her off, his voice
harsh. “Do you think Peter Christianson is going to want to take you to the
country club soirees if he thinks you’ve been fooling around with me? Do you?”
He grabbed her by the shoulders to make her look at him and was shaking her. As
soon as he realized it, he loosened his grip and started rubbing her arms
instead. He softened his voice to almost a whisper. “If this got out the only
guys that would want to take you out would be guys like me, and they would just
want to take you to the back seat of their car. You deserve so much more than
that Beth, you deserve a Peter Christianson.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on
his chest. “Any girl would be lucky to have you, Henry Maddox, and you are not
like all those other guys who are just out to get a girl in the backseat—you’re
different!”

He grinned into her hair. “Really? Have you been paying
attention for the last half hour or so?” He planted a kiss on the top of her
head. “Go, head to the bottom of the parking lot, and then circle around to the
lake side of the pavilion. If anyone asks, you were taking pictures of the lake
in the moonlight.” Then he pushed her away from him propelling her into a
happier future.

Henry took several steps backward until he was against his
car and then reached thru the open window for his flask. In his mind he was
begging her not to look back, but he watched to see if she would. When Beth got
about thirty yards away and had almost cleared the last line of parked cars,
she turned back to Henry and touched her fingertips to her lips and then held
her palm out to him in a silent wave good-bye. Then she was gone. Henry took a
long pull off his flask, and as the flames burned thru him, he wondered if the
flames of hell would feel the same, for surely that’s where he would spend his
eternity. While Beth had given him a tender good-bye, all he had been able to
think about was how much she looked like Laney in the dark.

Henry stayed in the parking lot another ten minutes and then
went in to the pavilion just long enough to catch the eye of all the boys and
let them know it was time to get rolling. They circled up at the back of his
car, six of them in total. At twenty-three, he was the oldest by almost two
years.

“Alright boys, this is by far the biggest load we’ve had to
deliver. That’s why we had to take on an extra driver tonight and why we’re
runnin’ all at once.”

One of the drivers, a lanky farm boy from out in the county
with worn and patched overalls, spit a stream of tobacco juice on the ground.
“Henry, seems to me a whole line of cars racin’ thru the backwoods is liable to
attract some attention. Don’t you think?”

Henry lit the cigarette that had been tucked behind his ear
and blew a wreath of smoke into the air. “Naw, boys, that’s the beauty of it.
We’re gonna split into three runs. You two,” he motioned to the lanky famer and
the stocky teenager beside him, “will run down the ridge until you can cross
over in Giles County. Now Stretch and my city slicker,” Henry pointed at the
shortest boy in the group and one that lived in the big town of Fenton, “y’all are gonna run the holler down all the way, stayin’ on the east side of the
ridge. Now listen to me. That part’s important. Stay on the east side of the
ridge. If you cross over anywhere near Bristol, they’ll be on you like a duck
on a June bug. That place is crawlin’ with Revenuers.”

Henry paused to pull out a pocket watch and check the time,
right on schedule. “I’ll take the new kid for a swim at Smith Mountain Lake and
slip through south of Axton.” There was a collective snicker from the group. Something
unique always seemed to happen on your first run with Henry. It was kind of rite
of passage. “They can’t guard every back road and pig path in the state.” With
that, Henry tossed his cigarette in the gravel, and they headed for their cars.

There was a small road that wound around the lake at the Summit. It could be used to get down to the flats on the south end of the lake where the
drag racing was done, or if a couple wanted a little more privacy you could
take the road around a little farther to go parking. But what very few people
knew was that if you followed the road far enough it was joined by an old
logging road. Now the logging road was overgrown with brush and brambles and
covered with fallen logs. However, if you had the right vehicle, it was
possible to get through in order to load contraband moonshine into very fast
hot-rod cars.

Henry sighed and fiddled with his TV remote. “So that’s it.
We loaded up the moonshine, and they all went off on their assigned routes and
were arrested, as were the purchasers on the other end, those that had
delivered to us and the distillers. It was the largest hooch supply line sting
they had conducted at that time.”

Devin jerked up out of her chair. “What do you mean ‘that’s
it’? That is not it! You avoided telling us a single name of one of the
drivers! And not once in the investigation files does it mention looking into
the possibility that the killer came in on a different road. That’s probably
because they didn’t even know it was there, Henry. One branch of law
enforcement does not talk to the other.” She threw her hands up in frustration,
stalking over to the window to stare out into the darkness. When she was
irritated her hair got in her way, so she twisted it all up on the top of her
head and held it there. After a few minutes she dropped her hair and turned
around with her hands on her hips. Her voice was very calm and even.

“Do you realize how many criminals were there that night? In
all likelihood, Laney was killed by someone delivering the moonshine, maybe
someone who figured you for a rat and was delivering a message. How could you
have not thought this was relevant information?”

He was frantic to reassure her; he couldn’t lose his second
chance. “I swear, it’s
not
relevant. Listen to me, none of the arrests
happened for two to three hours after the drivers left, so there was no reason
for them to think there was a rat yet, and they could never take the chance of
the moonshine sitting around in one place for too long, so they couldn’t get to
the delivery early.” Henry was sitting up in the bed and sliding forward as if
he was going to try and get out of the hospital bed with all of his wires still
attached. Shane stepped forward and eased him back down in the bed.

Devin came to the side of the bed and held Henry’s hand.
“Shh, calm down Henry. It’ll be fine.”

But he wasn’t done. “We were loading the moonshine into the
cars around ten o’clock, but according to the Coroner’s report, she was
already…” His eyes took on a glossy sheen, and no matter how many times he
cleared his throat his voice just would not steady under the weight of his
grief. “She was already gone by ten.”

Devin held on to Henry’s hand with both of hers and tried to
keep her voice steady for him.
Where is the harsh abrasive exterior I rely
on? This stupid town is making me all “in touch with my feelings”.

“Henry, those are all very valid points. But moonshining was
a very risky and paranoid business, what if they got suspicious and sent
someone out to the Summit before the delivery? What if Laney was just in the
wrong place at the wrong time?”

Again the purr of the mustang’s engine and the whistling of
the wind were the only sounds as Devin and Shane made the drive between the
hospital and Fenton. She wasn’t necessarily driving recklessly.
Forcefully
might be a better word, whipping the car into turns and yanking the shifter
thru the gears.

When she blew past the exit for Fenton doing eighty, Shane lay
back in his seat and drawled out, “Is there something on your mind? Or are we
fixin’ to be on one of those police car chase shows, you know where they follow
you with a helicopter?” He used his hands to mimic a land and air chase. “I
always thought that would be really cool. I just thought I’d be in the
helicopter, you know what I mean?” He rolled his head over to the side to look
at her.

Devin laughed despite herself. “You are such an idiot!” She let
off the accelerator and dropped her speed to seventy. “I drive. It’s what I do.
When I’m angry or sad or need to think, I drive. No one in my tiny
dysfunctional family knows how to express feelings, so this is the coping
mechanism I developed. At least that’s the crap the department shrink spews
off.” She laid one hand on top of the wheel and the other out the window in the
warm night breeze as she glanced at him with mischief in her dark eyes. “Of
course usually when I’m driving I don’t have an idiotic southern defense
attorney riding shotgun and giving me commentary.”

Shane rose up in his seat. “Oh, ho, we want commentary do
we? How about this? Going around these big bends at high speeds, I notice your Mustang
gets a little loose. She can handle the S curves, but not the sweeping bends.”

Devin was indignant. “She can, too! Don’t you dare take this
out on the car. If you have something to say to me, just spit out, but my baby
can grip any curve in the road.”

Shane was grinning as he lay back in his seat again.
“Interesting. You mean we should just talk about our feelings rather than
taking them out on others?”

Devin glared out the windshield. “I hate you.”

“You love me.” He was still smiling. In a sing song voice he
asked: “So what are you feeling?”

“Besides the urge to strangle you?” It would be a
justifiable homicide.

Surely all the judges in the county known him and would have
mercy on me.

He was still staring at her expectantly, grinning like an
idiot. It was obvious he was not going to let this go. “Basically I saved my
neighbor, and friend, from a burning building yesterday just to kill him today
with the knowledge that he was inadvertently responsible for the violent murder
of the love of his life. I’m not a gambler, but if I were, I’d take the wager
that if his heart doesn’t give out in a few days, he’ll commit suicide by the
end of the month.”

Shane’s voice was soft, “Devin, you don’t know that…”

“Yes, I do. I don’t have a lot to thank my family for, but
one thing is the creepy intuition I have for knowing how something is going to
go down. My crazy grandma had it too—ask any of the old-timers around town. You
have family here; they ought to be able to tell you.”

“Yeah, I have a couple generations of family in Fenton,
above and below the ground.” He laughed at his own joke as Devin got off the
interstate and headed home on a scenic byway. She slammed on the brakes when he
yelled out “Uncle Bailor!” expecting to see Shane’s relative standing in the
middle of the road. But he shook his head explaining that his great uncle,
Bailor Whitlock, had been buried the previous spring.

Devin was starting to think Shane could have Grandma’s bed
at the Looney Bin. “Ok, I’m…sorry?”

Shane waved her condolences off with his hand like a pesky
fly. “No, no, no. He was old, he was ready to go and be with his wife. The
point is he used to work for the government as a revenue agent.” Devin stared
at him blankly until he rolled his eyes. “City girl. A revenue agent was an
agent that went after stills and moonshine runners.”

Devin sighed in the first moment of relief all day. “Shane
Whitlock, I could kiss you right on the mouth!”

Shane’s smile spread from ear to ear. “Well wait until you
hear this—you’ll want to pick out china patterns. The Whitlocks hail from a
looong line of packrats. When he passed away, we cleaned out boxes and boxes of
files, notes, photo albums, memorabilia, you name it, about all his cases. It
took us a week to sort through all of that stuff packed in his tiny little
house down in Boca Raton. All of that information is now tucked safely away in
my aunt Frannie’s basement right here.” He flew his finger down to point into
his thigh, making a little popping sound with his tongue. “In Fenton, Virginia.”